My duck is gone

I’m sad and luckless,
For my pond is duckless.

Yesterday I fed Honey a huge dollop of peas and corn; she was on land, so it was easy to give her large amounts without them quickly sinking below dabbling level. As I fed her, I noticed that her flight feathers had grown pretty big. You can see them here.

Here she is scarfing down her lunch:

But today I’ve gone to the pond, food in hand, twice—and she’s gone! Flown the coop! Yes, I think her molt being over, and her wings ready to go, she simply flew off for bigger and better ducky things.

I am quite sad, though that’s tempered with the knowledge that she was heathy and well fed. Perhaps she’ll return next year, and maybe I’ll recognize her by the black stippling on the sides of her beak (I have an enlarged photo). But feeding the red-eared sliders isn’t quite the same; I’m unable to bond with turtles. And what am I going to do with the half pound of freeze-dried mealworms that I ordered to fuel her departure, and which will arrive today?

At least when your kids go off to college, and you become an empty nester, you know you’ll see them again.

I wouldn’t worry too much yet. Even up here, ducks have been known to not migrate. And especially where they have been fed? Oddsare with you, I would guess. (That’s why we aren’t allowed, by law, to feed them; they have to fly away, but more and more are staying). So keep a look out. The mealworms stay in the freezer.

If she has left, she’ll come back next year because she was so successful, right? We have wrens that come back to nest every year in the same place. We can’t be sure they are the same ones every year, of course, but we like to think they are.

If you knew her nesting/ resting site and could confidently assign *this* feather to Honey, would it be worthwhile DNA-fingerprinting it?
Do the roots (remiges? something like that) of dinosaur feathers have enough cellular material to ID DNA from? On reflection, humans (& presumably other mammals) don’t shed enough reliable DNA on their hair for forensic use, which is why they pluck (i.e. pull out by the root) hair for a DNA test. How well that translates to the more complex development of dinosaur feathers, I don’t know. But I bet someone does.

Ah. I’d see the term as “remiges attachment scars” on bones (Archaeopteryx or Compsognathus, or something like that) and took it ot refer to the rooting/ growth structures, not the feathers themselves.
But do the feathers contain DNA, or do you need to get some of the tissue analogous to the follicle of a mammalian hair?

This is widely employed to sex pet birds that are not sexually dimorphic. Used to be you needed a “blood feather”–one that’s growing so still has a blood supply–for this, the pulling of which not only causes pain but can lead to dangerous blood loss (and which makes the bird pretty damn mad); but now any shed feather’ll do.

We once had a baby cockatiel we were sure was male due to behavior and vocalizations, and we named him Theodore. But he was of a phenotype that indicates sex when the adult feathers come in, and after that molt by all appearances he was a girl. By that time we were so used to calling her Theodore that we kept the name and just changed the pronouns. Many years later when molted-feather sexing came about we sent one in just out of curiosity–and lo & behold, she was a boy after all. (We felt vindicated. 😉 ) So–another stretch of trying to remember the newly correct set of pronouns…We had him for 19 years and he’s still a fondly remembered character tho he died a decade or more ago.

Honey looks like a Mallard Duck. Maybe, she’ll return in the future with a handsome green-headed partner, and she’ll start a family at your pond. This past spring I’d seen at least a dozen pairs of mating mallard ducks.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in some cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on some still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Yes. Ducks are especially vulnerable as they molt all their flight feathers at once, rendering them incapable of flight till the new feathers grow in. In most bird species the flight feathers molt a few at a time so that the bird is always airworthy.

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain May she will stay
Resting by my pond again
June she’ll change her tune
On waddling feet she’ll prowl the night
July she will fly
And give no warning to her flight
August away she must
The autumn wind blows cross my pond
September I remember
A duck I knew has now abscond